Month: August 2011

Transcript

The Great Lakes hold a massive amount of water. They contain one fifth of the world’s fresh surface water. In the U.S., there are more miles of coastline along the Lakes than along the entire Atlantic seaboard. We think of the Lakes today as a great place to play on the beach, to swim, to go fishing.But those huge, beautiful lakes are changing. So fast that the agencies which manage fishing cannot keep up with the changes. On average, a new foreign species gets into the Lakes every seven months. Each could be a threat to the lakes and the fish in the lakes. In this special one-hour documentary, we explore the health and future of the Great Lakes, and hear stories about fish and the people who catch them.

Barbara Jenness (left) and Amy Sherman (right) chat during the meet-up. Part of FarmLink's goal to create communities of people interested in promoting locally grown food. (Photo by Lindsey Smith)

The group shares locally-brewed beer and homemade baked goods before swapping plastic bins full of local produce. (Photo by Lindsey Smith)

At the meet-up, Barbara Jenness shares some new cheese from her Dancing Goat Creamery. (Photo by Lindsey Smith)

Michigan farmers grow the most diverse crops of any state besides California. Agriculture is Michigan’s 2nd largest industry and it’s growing.
But Lindsey Smith reports many Michigan farms aren’t big enough to distribute through grocery stores:

Barbara Jenness owns Dancing Goat Creamery in a small town in West Michigan.

“I was asked by Meijer to have my cheese, which is a joke. He asked me, ‘How much can you give me?’ And I said, ‘Five pounds a week.’” (laughs)

Jenness only has 28 goats…definitely not enough to supply all the Meijer stores.
Distribution is sort of a nightmare for small and medium sized producers. Jenness sells most of her cheese directly to restaurants around Grand Rapids. Her husband spends hours each week delivering it all. Then he helps her haul the rest to farmers’ markets.

Jerry Adams figured there had to be a better way.

“So much stuff is created here but because there aren’t easy distribution systems to get it into the hand of people that can use it, a lot of our food just goes bad.”

Last spring Adams created FarmLink… a virtual farmers’ market. It’s specifically aimed at chefs in schools, restaurants and hospitals. Farmers list all of the produce they have on the virtual store shelves. Chefs login to FarmLink and build a virtual shopping cart with the local food that’s available.

A couple days later, the virtual FarmLink store becomes a brick and mortar one.

(sound of people gathering)

Chefs and farmers meet up at Adams’ office…an old furniture factory turned into an office space. People casually come and go…grabbing a pint of locally-brewed beer before loading up plastic bins full of produce.

“The real jist of this all is that we are too removed from our food. I want you to talk to the guy growing your green beans or the woman making your goat cheese.”

I meet Steve Vanhaitsma, the guy growing your lettuce. Today he brought 57 pounds from his farm 20 miles west of here.

“All this lettuce was picked this morning. And they have it today so it’s incredibly fresh. Whereas if I’m buying from a normal wholesaler it’s coming from California, it’s already been in transit for over a week. And you can ask any of the chefs here, there’s just no comparison.”

Chef Chris Perkey picks up pork belly, leeks and 20 pounds of Vanhaitsma’s lettuce. Perkey is executive chef at the Kent County Country Club. Perkey adjusts his menu to reflect what’s in season.

But he’s also got farmers adjusting to his menu. One farmer starting raising ducks this year knowing Perkey will buy at least six a week.

Transcript

“Our trouble’s going to be – we’re going to have to overcome and see what happens in the fall and the winter. January is not exactly the greatest time of the year for Michigan produce.”

Chefs will still be able to get lettuce in January because Steve Vanhaitsma’s greenhouse produces it year-round.

But Barbara Jenness’ goat cheese will be gone in the fall.

“As a mother of three boys I can tell you nothing was meant to lactate their whole life and so my girls all get the winter off.”

FarmLink is still working through kinks like this as the seasons change.

Other than that the business model is pretty simple – FarmLink takes a 5-percent cut of farmer’s sales and chefs’ orders. Sales are still pretty small – $2,000 on a good week, but the business is growing almost every week.

For the Environment Report, I’m Lindsey Smith.

Jerry Adams wants the Farmlink idea to catch on throughout the state, so he’s giving away his software to anyone who wants to start a Farmlink in their town.

C. J. Baker operates a salmon fishing charter boat for Puddle Jumpers Charters. He moved his boat from Lake Huron to Lake Michigan after the salmon fishing collapsed in Lake Huron. (Photo by Lester Graham)

Fishing rods as far as the eye can see. Many salmon fishing charter boats moved to Lake Michigan after salmon fishing collapsed in Lake Huron. Many others went out of business. (Photo by Lester Graham)

At a public hearing, a Michigan Department of Natural Resources official explains why it's proposing to dramatically reduce the number of Chinook salmon to be introduced into Lake Huron. (Photo by Lester Graham)

A biologist at the Michigan Department of Resources Alpena Fisheries Research Station explains there is not enough food in Lake Huron for the 1.4 million Chinook the agency normally releases. (Photo by Lester Graham)

The Environment Report in a collaborative project with Michigan Watch is looking at salmon fishing on the Great Lakes. Salmon fishing has meant a lot of tourism dollars for cities along the coasts. But, changes in Lake Huron have caused a collapse of salmon. In the final report of the series “The Collapse of the Salmon Economy,” Lester Graham looks at what happened and whether other lakes will lose their salmon.

Fishing for salmon on some parts of Lake Huron is still a big deal.

Ad: “This July for the first annual Mackinaw City Salmon Festival…”

But for most of the Lake Huron port cities, salmon fishing has collapsed. Blame it mostly on zebra mussels and quagga mussels. They were brought into the Great Lakes in the ballasts of foreign cargo ships. Quagga mussels now cover most of the bottom of Lake Huron… filtering out the algae and plankton which are the base of the food chain. That’s caused the collapse of alewife, a fish that salmon eat.

The Michigan Department of Natural Resources continues to put about 1.4 million small chinook salmon into the lake each year, but last year. But, last year only a thousand chinook salmon were caught. Considering the cost of raising all those salmon, that comes to about $475 per fish caught.

The DNR is now proposing to dramatically reduce the number of salmon it releases into Lake Huron because there’s no food for the fish.

When the salmon started disappearing, so did the charter fishing boats and with them tourism dollars for the communities along Lake Huron… about a million dollars for each port city.

Many charter boats moved to Lake Michigan where salmon fishing is still good.

C.J. Baker operates a boat for Puddle Jumpers Charters. He moved from Alpena on Lake Huron to Ludington on Lake Michigan. He’s angry that the government hasn’t done more to stop invasive species such as zebra and quagga mussels from ruining the Great Lakes.

“Because this stuff should be regulated by the feds and these ships should not be hauling this stuff in here. It’s a billion dollar industry here.”

Back along Lake Huron, the restaurants, motels, and other businesses that relied on salmon fishing tourism couldn’t just pull up anchor and move.

“The collapse of the salmon fishery out here has been devastating to the area.”

Transcript

He says while many other bait and tackle shops went out of business, he’s changed the emphasis of his store, turning it more into a party store, offering snacks and whitefish sausage… and fishing lures for other fish still in Lake Huron.

He says, of course, for the DNR to continue stocking a million salmon a year makes no sense.

“When they plant these salmon in the river right now, I mean, that’s the only small fish out there and that’s what the walleye are eating, you know.”

In fact, since the disappearance of alewife and salmon, other native fish like walleye are doing well, eating those little hatchery raised salmon.

Jim Johnson is a biologist based at Michigan’s Alpena Fisheries Research Station. He says the small towns along Lake Huron have been hurt, collectively losing tens of millions of tourism dollars. Now the worry is whether we’ll see the salmon fishery in other Great Lakes collapse.

“In Lake Michigan, we’re talking a billion dollars lost in the coastal communities of that side of the lake if the chinook salmon fishery were to collapse — not that it will.”

Johnson is quick to stress Lake Michigan is different from Lake Huron. In fact, this year there were more alewife in Lake Michigan and the salmon fishing has been good. But fisheries experts are concerned.

Mark Gaden is with the Great Lakes Fishery Commission which monitors fishing across the Great Lakes.

“It wouldn’t be at all surprising if Lake Michigan and Lake Ontario for that matter which are similar as well would follow the same pattern as Lake Huron.”

They’re worried that the Pacific salmon that helped make the Great Lakes a world-class fishing spot might disappear.

With Michigan Watch, I’m Lester Graham for The Environment Report.

This series “The Collapse of the Salmon Economy,” was reported and produced by Lester Graham and Bridget Bodnar in a collaboration of Michigan Watch and The Environment Report.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife fish hatchery in Brimley, MI on Lake Superior. The trailers are 'mass marking trailers,' used to tag every hatchery fish introduced into the Great Lakes. (Photo by Lester Graham)

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Allan Lane, prepping a mass marking trailer to tag fish to be introduced into the Great Lakes. 60,000 fish can be marked and tagged in a day. (Photo by Lester Graham)

Hatchery fish are tagged to distinguish them from naturally produced fish to better determine the number of fish needed to stock the Great Lakes. (Photo courtesy of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)

Fishing in the Great Lakes wouldn’t be what it is today without stocking Pacific salmon in the lakes. But it costs a lot of money. Michigan fisheries managers say it’s worth every dime. In “The Collapse of the Salmon Economy,” a joint collaboration between The Environment Report and Michigan Watch, Lester Graham reports on the economic benefits of subsidizing salmon fishing in the Great Lakes:

In the 1960s, the state of Michigan first put salmon into the Great Lakes. It was a gamble to create world-class recreational fishing.

Michigan spends about $8 million a year stocking salmon and other types of fish. But the Department of Natural Resources doesn’t really know how many fish we’re catching for those millions of dollars.

Gary Whelan is in charge of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources fish hatcheries.

“I wouldn’t say we have no idea. I think we have a ballpark. We don’t have a great estimate. We would like to have a lot better estimates than we have now. I would absolutely agree with that.”

A Michigan Watch analysis found the cost for each fish caught in Michigan waters ranges from a couple of dollars to $150 per fish caught, depending on species and depending on year. We used catch estimates used by some other Great Lakes states.

And… he says besides, we’re looking at it all wrong. It’s not about the cost per hatchery-raised fish caught; it’s about what those salmon mean to Michigan’s economy.

“You have lots of people, for example, who are catch-and-release fishermen who will never take fish home. But, they’re spending a lot of money to go fishing for this fish or the opportunity to fish for them.”

And stocking Pacific salmon does attract anglers from all over.

Depending on whose estimate you want to use, recreational fishing contributes between $1.5 billion to $4 billion each year to Michigan’s economy.

And it’s the anglers’ license fees and excise taxes they pay when buying boats and bait that pay for stocking the fish. Whelan says it’s a really good return on investment that’s funded by the excise tax dollars and fees of the people who want to catch those fish.

But, the same reason Michigan and other Great Lakes states really don’t have a good numbers on the value of fish caught causes other problems. They’re not really clear about how many fish they need to raise in hatcheries to make sure there’s enough fish for the anglers… without putting too many fish into the lakes.

Michigan and other states are now getting some help from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. They’re marking and tagging every fish that’s released this year.

Transcript

We caught up with that operation at a federal fish hatchery on Lake Superior.

(sound of mass marking trailer)

Converted horse trailers are filled with equipment that puts a tiny wire tag on about 60-thousand fish a day.

Allen Lane is the Fish and Wildlife Service agent prepping things here.

“By tagging every chinook salmon, we’re able to determine how much natural reproduction is going on.”

Not knowing has caused some problems. In Lake Huron, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources has been releasing about 1.4 million chinook salmon each year, but had no idea how many chinook salmon were reproducing naturally in the lake.

Dave Spratt is a journalist with Great Northern Outdoors.net.

“These chinooks were going into all these un-dammed Canadian tributaries of Lake Huron and multiplying like fiends. I mean, it was clearly way more than the lake could support.”

The Michigan DNR now estimates that natural reproduction in Canada could have been adding 10 million to 15 million chinook salmon each year on top of those being stocked by Michigan.

Lake Huron couldn’t handle all those salmon at the top of the food chain. And at the same time the bottom of the food chain was collapsing because of invasive species such as the quagga mussel filtering out plankton in the lake. The salmon fishery in most of Lake Huron has now collapsed. That’s had huge repercussions for the businesses and communities that came to rely on salmon fishing.

With Michigan Watch, I’m Lester Graham for The Environment Report.

Tomorrow, Lester looks at the collapse of the salmon fishery in Lake Huron… and concerns the same thing could happen in Lake Michigan.

Before the Pacific salmon was introduced to eat the invasive alewives, the little fish suffered massive die-offs and ended up in stinking piles on Great Lakes beaches. (Photo by Lester Graham)

The Great Lakes are changing so fast that the agencies which manage fishing cannot keep up with the changes. Some types of fish populations are collapsing and others are thriving… at least for now.
In a project between The Environment Report and Michigan Watch, Lester Graham has a series of reports on what’s happening and why. This first report looks at some of the history of fishing on the Great Lakes:

It used to be the lake trout was the fish to catch. It was big. It was tasty. But, by the late 1950s, that fish and others had been severely over-fished. And an eel-like, blood-sucking parasite called the sea lamprey further reduced lake trout numbers.

And those weren’t the worst problems for lake trout. A fish called the alewife invaded the Great Lakes through manmade canals. Lake trout starting feeding on alewives. But alewives caused a thiamine deficiency in lake trout. A lack of vitamin B1.

Mark Gaden is with the Great Lakes Fishery Commission.

“The thiamine deficiency that the alewives cause is one of the top reasons why natural reproduction has been very slow to occur over the decades in the Great Lakes of these species.”

Catching a lake trout became rare.

With not enough lake trout to keep the alewife in check, the invasive fish population would grow to immense proportions and then a food shortage or a harsh winter would cause the alewife population to crash. In the 1950s and 60s, dead alewives washed up on the beaches of the Great Lakes in piles stretching miles along the coasts.

“If you were living in the Great Lakes basin at that time and your shorelines were choked with stinking masses of dead fish, would you want to go to the beach?”

The Michigan Department of Natural Resources had no idea what to do. In 1964, the agency hired a Michigan native, Howard Tanner. He says right after he was hired, the Director of the agency, Ralph McMullin, a wildlife biologist and his deputy, a forester, met with Tanner.

“And they just said, ‘You know, we don’t know anything about fish, but the fishery division hasn’t done anything in years. Just take it and DO something.’ And Ralph, as he was going out the door, said, ‘Make it spectacular!’”

Transcript

Tanner says he saw the alewife as simply food for a predator fish. Something needed to replace the lake trout as the Great Lakes’ top predator. His experience as a fish biologist out West told him Pacific salmon would do the trick and it would be “spectacular.”

“I’ve got the world’s biggest chunk of fresh water and it’s full of food and I’ve got a species of fish to put on it. You didn’t have to be a rocket scientist — you had to be a fish biologist maybe — but there wasn’t any doubt.”

Tanner introduced Pacific coho salmon. His successor, Wayne Tody, introduced chinook salmon a little later. Over the course of just a few years, Michigan anglers rediscovered the Great Lakes. People from out of state started coming to the Great Lakes. Salmon fishing caused a boom in tourism.

And… suddenly dead alewives were not washing up on the beaches. Howard Tanner says it was just a cycle of boom and bust for the alewife, but people assumed it was the salmon.

“We said, ‘No, no, no. That’s not true. We must have said that for at least a minute-and-a-half and then we said, ‘Okay, we did it.’ (laugh) But it was serendipity all the way through.”

((Sound of boat))

It’s sunrise on Lake Michigan near Grand Haven. I’m on a salmon fishing boat with former Michigan fisheries chief John Robertson. He remembers when fishing just wasn’t that great on the Great Lakes.

“Over on this part of the state and, you know, the better part of Lake Huron there just wasn’t all that much, there wasn’t that much of a sport fishery.”

But now, a couple of generations of anglers have been catching Pacific Salmon on the Great Lakes. Communities along the coasts have become dependent on salmon to attract tourists and their money.

With Michigan Watch, I’m Lester Graham for The Environment Report.

Tomorrow, Lester looks at the growing cost of stocking salmon in the Great Lakes. I’m Rebecca Williams.

Special thanks to Bridget Bodnar for her research assistance with this series.

Dr. Emma J. Rosi-Marshall and technician Dustin Kincaid from the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies introduce a mix of nutrients into the Manistee River, so they can track how the river processes the nutrients. (Photo by Tom Kramer)

Last night, officials with the Environmental Protection Agency
held a meeting for people living near last summer’s Kalamazoo River oil spill. Steve Carmody reports:

EPA Regional Administrator Susan Hedman told an audience in Marshall last night that cleanup crews have removed 766,000 gallons of oil from the Kalamazoo River during the past year. But she says there’s more work to do.

“There’s still significant submerged oil that’s spread along 35 miles of the river system that was impacted by the initial spill. Much of this is in three distinct areas: around Ceresco (Dam) in Battle Creek and at the point where the river enters Morrow Lake.”

Because there are still a thousand government and contract workers on the river, Hedman is not as optimistic as she was a few months ago that the river will completely reopen soon. The current cleanup operation is undergoing a periodic reassessment. Hedman says that will decide the future direction of the cleanup.

For the Environment Report, I’m Steve Carmody in Marshall.

(music sting)

This is the Environment Report.

This summer, a group of scientists are studying five large rivers in the Midwest… including the St. Joseph, the Muskegon and the Manistee rivers in Michigan. It’s part of a three year study of how large rivers process fertilizers – and how things like farming and wastewater affect the rivers.

Tom Kramer spent some time with this group that calls themselves “The River Gypsies”:

The forecast says there is a 50/50 chance of thunderstorms, but the River Gypsies can’t slow down for a little rain.

This group of 13 scientists, PhDs, grad students and undergrads has had three weeks to study five rivers in two states – packing up and moving to a new campground every three or four days. Picnic tables have become temporary laboratories.

Transcript

Jennifer Tank, a professor at Notre Dame, says one of her students wasn’t all that prepared for this nomadic lifestyle.

“Now he did bring a Samsonite suitcase that weighs about 100 pounds into the field with him, but I know that next year he’ll have a great dry bag… so he’s learning as he goes along.”

Last year, the team studied five rivers in Idaho and Wyoming.

They’re collecting data on rivers ranging from pristine and crystal clear, to cloudy with mud and debris, and rivers that flow through farm fields and cities.

The goal is to determine how well these rivers remove or retain nutrients from the water. Specifically: nitrogen and phosphorus.

Too much can lead to excessive plant growth and the loss of oxygen in the water – impacting aquatic life.

Tank says for years, people have assumed rivers like the Manistee act like pipes carrying water and everything in it from beginning to end.

“We dump in our effluent. We let our agricultural runoff come into these systems. Because that’s what rivers do, they move stuff downstream. They are these pipes. But what we didn’t know is just how biologically reactive are these pipes. ”

And before now, there wasn’t a study that looked at how a large river processes nutrients. What this team does is introduce nutrients into the river and use sensors to measure how far downriver those nutrients travel.

Bob Hall is a professor at the University of Wyoming. He’s checking some of the instruments tied to some submerged limbs along the river.

“So here are three sensors, two of them are measuring oxygen concentrations every five minutes.”

The level of oxygen in the water confirms what they’ve come to expect. Jennifer Tank says rivers do remove a good deal of nutrients from the water.

“We probably were overestimating just how much was getting downstream or downriver at the mouth of a watershed. We were underestimating the potential role of the river.”

That means with all of that lawn fertilizer and wastewater pumped into rivers, much more of the nutrients are retained by the river than previously thought… and less makes it to the end of the river.

Tank says this means we need to manage these rivers for their nutrient uptake, not just recreation or scenic beauty.

“We owe it to the environment to manage the nutrients effectively. And not just use these as pipes to transport it to the middle of Lake Michigan.”

A few days after arriving on the Manistee River, the data is collected, the tents are folded and the caravan continues.

And next summer, the River Gypsies will be at it again.

They’ll be back out west studying five rivers in five weeks in three states.

This 1930's bungalow in Southwest Detroit is being deconstructed. But first, the team has to clear the home of everything inside. (Photo by Rebecca Williams)

The crew salvages anything of value, but the former residents were hoarders, so there is a lot of trash that must be thrown away. (Photo by Rebecca Williams)

The deconstruction team wears protective clothing and respirators. (Photo by Rebecca Williams)

The view from the alley. (Photo by Rebecca Williams)

Nearly a quarter of the homes in Detroit are empty. That’s more than 79,000 vacant homes, according to the last Census.

Of those, Mayor Dave Bing’s office considers 12,000 to be dangerous. They’re burned out, or falling apart. They attract squatters and drug dealers. So the city is paying contractors to demolish them.

But another group of people says these homes don’t have to be demolished. They can be taken apart board by board… and the materials can be salvaged.

The non-profit WARM Training Center is teaching deconstruction classes to residents of Detroit who are unemployed. They want to create a new industry in the city and put some people back to work.

(sound of guy with sledge hammer)

Today, the student work crew is clearing out this 1930’s bungalow in Southwest Detroit. The porch and the roof are crumbling. The team’s pulling out bag after bag of trash.

“All the neighbors, they’re just delighted this is happening. It’s been a long time coming.”

Dorothy Young is sitting on her front porch next door, watching. She says most people on her street have gardens and they mow their grass. But the people who lived next door were hoarders, and the house filled up with junk. Eventually, they were foreclosed on. Then the house sat empty. And kids started breaking in, smashing the windows.

“People were coming in and staying over. I was afraid they would start a fire.”

She says she’s glad to see the house taken down… but she’s not sure there will be anything good left inside.

Transcript

James Willer is the site supervisor and one of the class instructors. He’s helping a group of guys clear out the garage. Once the site is safe… they’ll start the painstaking work.

“The last thing that went on in building the house is the first thing that comes off.”

The hardwood floors and the kitchen cabinets will go first. Then the windows and the doors.

Next, it’s the roof, then the walls, then the foundation.

Then, a crew will backfill the site, and you’d never know there was an 80 year old house here.

Willer says there’s a lot of value in these old homes. He says the lumber can be especially valuable. For example, a lot of older houses were built with heart pine – it’s from centuries-old trees, and you can’t buy it at your typical home improvement store.

“If we just treated everything as wholesale from the last house we did, there’s about $40,000 of materials there.”

That’s for everything from hardwood floors and windows to steel and siding.

But taking a house apart literally nail by nail is not fast. It can take two or three weeks. Demolishing a home takes just half an hour.

And demolished homes – along with their contents – usually go to the landfill. This is the third house the WARM Training Center has taken apart, and so far with the first two, they’ve diverted about 90 percent of the materials from the landfill.

James Willer says this could be a viable new industry.

“We have the building stock to be able to start to kind of jumpstart that economy, with the residents of Detroit, teaching them valuable skills that are going to make them more marketable in their professional careers.”

Dwayne Brown is one of the students working on the house. He says he feels like deconstructing the house helps preserve some of its history.

“I think about the people who first moved in here: what were they like? How excited they were when they first moved into their home, despite where they came from.”

Brown says he’s hoping to start his own business.

“And If we are to help the city of Detroit save its neighborhoods, well they need more people out here in the field. This is a dream and it will be a challenge.”

So far the city has demolished more than three thousand homes. The WARM Training Center is hoping officials will start letting them save some of the materials from the homes that remain.

That’s the Environment Report. I’m Rebecca Williams.

Special thanks to Matt Grocoff for his production help with this story.

The Obama Administration issued the first ever fuel economy standards for the biggest trucks on the road. (Photo courtesy of the EPA)

When you’re on the highway, you see all those big 18-wheelers… the cement trucks and trucks hauling logs… the refrigerated trucks heading to the grocery store… pretty soon, all these kinds of trucks will be seeing some changes.

David Friedman is with the Union of Concerned Scientists. He says these trucks are cleaner than they used to be.

“We’ve seen a lot of progress when it comes to the pollutants that cause smog or the particulates that get deep in your lungs, causing asthma and lung disease. Thanks to regulations from California and the EPA we’ve seen those big rig trucks cleaned up a lot on that end.”

But… he says when it comes to fuel consumption… and greenhouse gasses… not so much.

The Obama Administration is stepping in, and has just issued the first ever fuel economy standards for new medium and heavy trucks. It’ll start with trucks and busses built in 2014. They’ll have to reduce the fuel they use and their greenhouse gas emissions by 10 to 20 percent… depending on the type of truck.

“These trucks represent about four percent of the vehicles on the road but account of 20 percent of our highway fuel use.”

David Friedman says these heavy vehicles also emit a lot of carbon dioxide.

“In many cases, they end up producing about three times the global warming pollution as your typical car. They have an outsized impact on oil dependence and global warming from transportation. That’s why this is such an important step.”

The White House says the regulations will save businesses $50 billion dollars in fuel costs – and more than 500 million barrels of oil.

The trucking industry and manufacturers played a big role in drafting these new standards. They met with officials from the Department of Transportation and the Environmental Protection Agency over the past year.

The result is a pretty massive book of regulations – about a thousand pages.

“The rule is very complex – it’s because the nature of this industry is quite complex.”

Allen Schaeffer is the Executive Director of The Diesel Technology Forum. The group represents companies such as Chrysler, GM, and Caterpillar. Basically, all kinds of companies that make diesel engines, and technology to control emissions.

He says the manufacturers are pretty happy with the new standards.

“We think the technologies to do this are ready on the shelf for the most part and can be put into motion pretty quickly. Some changes will be not so visible, some will be more visible – you’ll be seeing tractor trailers looking even more streamlined, more aerodynamic in the coming years.”

And he says you’ll see something called “super-single tires” replacing those classic dual tires on the big rigs.

Transcript

Joe Rajkovacz is with the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association. He says the regulations will hurt small businesses… such as the stick haulers who move timber in northern Michigan. He says it’ll cost a lot to comply with the regulations.

“U.S. EPA estimates are roughly $6500 per truck. We are incredibly, not just suspicious, we don’t believe it for a minute.”

He says big companies with larger fleets will have an easier time adapting.

“It’s going to severely handicap small businesses.”

But Rajkovacz says there’s no question truckers want to use less fuel.

“Look, I ran my own trucks for 29 years. I didn’t need the government telling me how to wisely use that most precious resource that was costing me the majority of the money I was earning.”

He says there are less expensive ways to cut fuel use, including the way you drive. So he wants to see more flexibility from the federal government to make it easier for small businesses to comply with the new standards.

Beef from the cattle on this 350 acre farm on MSU's campus will be served in the cafeterias at MSU in the fall. (Photo by Emily Fox)

The head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Lisa Jackson, is in Michigan today. She’s visiting for a ribbon cutting at Ventower Industries in Monroe. It’s a company that will be making towers for wind turbines.

Scott Viciana is the company’s vice president. He says the plant is built on a former industrial landfill. So first, they had to clean up the land.

“We stumbled across less (sic) concerns in the end than we thought potentially we could.”

The wind power industry is facing a lot of opposition… often from people who don’t want to live near the turbines.

Scott Viciana says he thinks the industry will grow, once people get used to the idea of wind power.

Local food is the hottest thing on menus this year. That’s according to a survey by the National Restaurant Association. Emily Fox reports Michigan State University researchers are trying to give consumers more information about locally grown food:

FOX: Okay, so not every restaurant is like the one featured in this sitcom. But researchers at Michigan State University say people do want more information about their food. They’re starting a pilot program to do just that with local beef.

(tractor sound)

I went on tractor tour of MSU’s 350 acre cattle farm on campus. This is where MSU students and researchers are raising cattle that will be packaged and processed in Michigan and fed to students in campus cafeterias in the fall.

“We can run roughly 150 cows here…”

That’s Jason Rowntree. He’s an MSU professor that is a part of this local beef program.

In the fall the students will be served the beef raised on this farm. There will be kiosks in the cafeterias and bar codes on table tents that students can scan with their smart phones. That will take them to a website that comes up with all kinds of information about the beef including where the cow was raised and what its diet was. The bigger idea is to eventually have these barcodes on packaged meat in grocery stores so consumers can learn about the beef before they buy it.

Dan Buskirt is a professor in Animal Sciences at MSU. He’s leading this project to track beef from farm to fork.

“All the technology is currently there to be able to do this. We just have to put it together and put it in people’s hands so that they can start using it.”

Buskirt says it makes sense to start this tracking program in Michigan. In 2007, the Michigan Department of Agriculture mandated that all cows have tracking tags. That’s so if there is a disease outbreak, a cow can be traced back to the farm where the outbreak began. Because of this, all cows in Michigan have what is called radio frequency identification. It’s a microchip inserted into the cow’s ear that has a number attached to it so the cow can be tracked. Buskirt says they will be utilizing that existing system in their pilot program.

This year the program will provide 4,000 pounds of local beef to MSU cafeterias. Buskirk expects the program to expand over the years and branch out to local retailers.

The Kalamazoo River on July 30, 2010, after the Enbridge pipeline broke. (Photo courtesy of the State of Michigan)

The Environmental Protection Agency is asking the company responsible for last year’s oil spill in the Kalamazoo River for information they say is missing.
Last summer an Enbridge Energy pipeline ruptured, releasing more than 840,000 gallons of tar sands oil. Cleanup is still underway. Lindsey Smith reports the data were supposed to be gathered in the spring:

Last spring after the snow and ice melted, cleanup efforts on the Kalamazoo River really ramped up. The EPA came up with a plan to monitor air quality. The agency directed Enbridge to collect air samples to look for contaminants that could have been stirred up during the spring cleaning. Enbridge also was supposed to collect weather data so the EPA knew the conditions when the samples were taken.

Ralph Dollhopf heads EPA’s Incident Command for the Enbridge spill. He says some of that weather data is missing.

“It’s not necessarily a bad thing but we want to make sure that we understand the complete situation.”

Marshall resident Susan Connolly says she’s disappointed, but not surprised the data Enbridge is responsible for gathering could be missing.

“That would be just like letting a pedophile babysit a child. I mean why would you let the person that caused the pipeline to spill to be the ones to monitor?”

The EPA oversees the cleanup.

An Enbridge spokesman says the company has not received the EPA’s notice yet so he declined to comment for now.

For the Environment Report, I’m Lindsey Smith.

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State officials say they’ve discovered a virus for the first time in wild fish in Michigan. It’s called koi herpesvirus.

Gary Whelan is with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.

He says the virus might have contributed to the death of several hundred common carp in Kent Lake last June. Whelan says the virus is known to affect common carp, goldfish and koi. And it can be fatal.

He says this virus led to die-offs of several thousand carp in Ontario a few years ago.

“They had thousands of large adult dead carp floating up on people’s front yards, so that’s not a good situation to be in.”

Michigan officials are investigating whether the virus could affect native fish, such as minnows.

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He says this virus could’ve turned up in Kent Lake after someone released an infected fish into the lake.

“You know probably somebody dumped their goldfish that was infected or maybe a carp escaped out of a pond during a flood period.”

Whelan says it’s illegal to move live fish from one body of water to another. And it’s just a bad idea.

He says the virus does not cause any health effects in people.

Crews in Chicago are on the hunt for Asian carp this week. The term Asian carp refers to two species: bighead and silver carp. The crews are looking for the carp in Lake Calumet, which is linked by a river to Lake Michigan. Asian carp have been found in the rivers that feed into Lake Michigan from Illinois.

John Rogner is the assistant director of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources. He says they’re looking for live carp after finding carp DNA in Lake Calumet.

He says it could mean there are live Asian carp in the lake.

“But there are some other possibilities. One is that there is DNA that comes upstream from downriver from boat hulls; it might be coming from restaurants in parts of Chicago that come out through the storm sewers.”

Some restaurants in the city serve Asian carp, so waste water could contain DNA from the fish. Rogner says people could also be releasing live carp into the lake, even though that’s illegal.

He says so far this week, they have not found any live bighead or silver carp in Lake Calumet.